Levi O’Brien was 12 years old when he was featured in Jesus Camp. Camp activities included protesting abortion outside the supreme court.
Photograph: Courtesy of Loki Films

Ten-year-old Andrew Sommerkamp, with his shy demeanor and floppy blond hair, mounts the stage of the Kids On Fire church camp, and nervously tells the crowd that he’s struggling with his belief in God. He’d spent days watching his fellow Christian campers weep uncontrollably, repenting and begging God’s forgiveness, and he has a confession to share.

“I just want to talk about belief in God ... I’ve been having a hard time with it,” he says, staring at the ground, scared and confused as the other kids look around at each other with anxiety in their eyes. “To believe in God is hard because you don’t see him, you don’t know him much. Sometimes I don’t even believe what the Bible says. It makes me a faker, it makes me feel guilty and bad.”

It’s one of several emotionally exhausting scenes in the 2006 documentary, Jesus Camp. Over the course of its celebrated and contested life, Jesus Camp has become a Rorschach test for audiences: some evangelicals see it as a fair representation of their culture, while secular, left-leaning audiences typically see an expose against a malicious force of right-wing indoctrination, often walking away with one angry phrase on their lips: child abuse.

Ten years later, Sommerkamp (yes, that’s his real name) has abandoned evangelical Christianity, living with a group of spiritual seekers in Mount Shasta, California. His split from the evangelical world happening when his father came out as gay. He says he spent several years angry at the church, but has since discovered peace in eastern mysticism, quantum mechanics, and psychotropic drugs.

“Was it child abuse? Yes and no,” he said in a recent interview, about his time at Kids on Fire church camp. “I think they had the best of intentions, but I see it as sick people trying to treat sick people. It’s their coping mechanism for figuring out why we’re alive. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything, though, because it allowed me at such a young age to question my existence.”

‘I have peace of mind’

Levi O’Brien was 12 when he was featured in Jesus Camp, sporting an enormous rat-tail, oversized T-shirts, and an unusually confident demeanor. Unlike Sommerkamp, in the film, O’Brien was wildly enthusiastic about his faith, speaking passionately about how his life had been transformed by God. It’s an intensity that continues in him today, which he applies to his job as a staff member of World Revival Ministries.

“One of the problems with faith-based teaching is it teaches children not to trust their own reason and intuition, undermining their ability to have confidence in their own knowledge and ability to process information. There is a lot of psychological damage that follows when people are trained not to trust themselves.”

For many viewers, Jesus Camp was their first exposure to a Pentecostal church service, where crying, screaming, dancing, speaking in tongues and convulsions are as ritualistic as incense at a Catholic ceremony.

Levi O’Brien and his fiancee in 2016. Photograph: Courtesy of Levi O’Brien

Co-director of the film Heidi Ewing said she disagreed with the teachings of the camp, but didn’t feel camp leaders were abusive.

“They’re not doing anything illegal, and if you want to raise your children as liberal progressives, to be amped up about environmentalism and being pro-choice, you can do that,” she said. “Some of the arguments against the film were so knee-jerk, it made me realize the far left and the far right have a lot in common.”

Liberal outrage

In addition to the camp, the film captures an intimate portrayal of the children’s lives at home, where every aspect of their day is wrapped up in evangelical beliefs. Their home-school textbooks deny global-warming and teach creationism. They listen to Christian music and rightwing talk radio, watch Christian movies, and pledge allegiance to a Christian flag. Activities included proselytizing to strangers at a bowling alley, and protesting abortion outside the supreme court.

Liberal audiences were outraged by a scene featuring pastor Ted Haggard (leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, and informal advisor to then president George W Bush), where he disparages homosexuality as a sin, then makes a joke about infidelity and blackmail into the camera. Serendipitously, Jesus Camp hit theaters at the exact time that Haggard was exposed as having a three-year relationship with a male prostitute, from whom he also purchased methamphetamine.

Late-night political comedians like Jon Stewart and Bill Maher had a lot of fun with that clip, fueling the outrage and popularity of Jesus Camp among atheists.

Director of the Kids On Fire camp and lead subject of the film, Becky Fischer, declined to speak with us for this story. Though in her memoir, Jesus Camp, My Story, she said that while the film sensationalized and overly politicized the camp, overall she was satisfied with it.

Following the documentary’s release, Fischer helped promote Jesus Camp along with an evangelical PR company, but soon found herself the target of a radical opposition to her ministry.

There is a lot of psychological damage that follows when people are trained not to trust themselves

Valerie Tarico, child psychologist

“My email box was spilling over with angry accusations. “‘Child abuse!’ ‘Brainwashing!’ ‘Indoctrinating Children!’ ‘You should be ashamed of yourself!’” she wrote.

Fischer says she often feared for her safety when people would recognize her in public. Following the film’s explosive popularity, and an Academy Award nomination, the camp was vandalized and Fischer was not allowed to rent it for her ministry again.

“For the first time in my life I could truly relate to Jewish people, seeing how a Holocaust could have its embryonic beginnings,” she wrote.

While she no longer operates a church camp, Fischer continues to provide religious instruction to children through her company, Kids Ministry International.

By the end of our conversation, Sommerkamp said that he didn’t think he was abused. He was extremely critical of evangelicals, at one point calling Becky Fischer “a terrible fucking person who is fueled by the spiritual suffering of other people”. But, he said, he had chosen to have love for her, and was even grateful for the experience of Jesus Camp.

“They showed us what it meant to really feel deep emotions for life, for God,” he says. “Some people would say that it was all fake, but when I look back on it, our belief in it had made it real. It really taught me the power of belief.”

Update: Further context about Tarico’s professional background was added to this article after publication.